Highlights of 2001

Sree Shanmukhananda Sangeetha Sabha of New Delhi held its annual Tyagaraja Music Festival in late February at two venues in the capital city. And in keeping with its tradition, the Sabha, a pioneer in Delhi, gave away awards to four leading classical artistes.
Mandolin U. Srinivas was given the Nadhakalanidi title while singers Neyveli Santhanagopalan and Bombay Jayashree Ramnath were given the Nada Bhushanum titles.
The Natya Ratna titles were given to senior dancers Chitra Visweswaran of Madras and Delhi-based Saroja Vaidyanathan, while the Natya Ilavarasi award was given to Jayalakshmi Eshwar.
Kutcheris were held from February 16 to 25 at the Andhra Pradesh Bhavan and at the Triveni Theatres. Supreme Court judge Justice Doraiswamy Raju was the chief guest on the inaugural day of the festival and he unveiled a grand portrait of saint Thyagaraja. IAS officer P. Sanker, a Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum, was also a special invitee for this function.
The sabha follows a unique pattern of scheduling kutcheris by reserving the first slot of the evening for promising artistes from the Delhi region and hosting top-class artistes later in the day.
Among the big artistes who were featured at the Delhi festival were singer S. Sowmya, dancer Bhargavi Gopal, a disciple of K J Sarasa of Madras, and singers Sanjay Subramanyam and T V Sankaranarayanan. Honorary Secretary of the Sabha, P. Seshadri says that it has become rather difficult nowadays to host such a festival because of the declining patronage from sponsors for classical events. "But we want to provide the best for our rasikas," he added.
A Tamil Drama Festival is due to be hosted by this Sabha in early April by the Crazy Mohan drama troupe of Madras. This festival will be held at the Delhi Tamil Sangam auditorium.
If you wish to contact the Sree Shanmukhananda Sabha in Delhi call Seshadri at 011-6226507 / 6226506.